Goings and comings

Saturday I decided to undertake a sort of grand slam of photographic archiving projects I’ve been meaning to accomplish for a while. Since they were nicely arranged in a more or less straight line westward, it was actually fairly handy to manage. In order, they were Westwood Plaza in Etobicoke, the unopened stretch of Sheridan Park Drive in Mississauga, and the reconstruction of Barnstable Bridge and its environs on Lower Base Line in Milton, which has gone into heavy overtime since last winter.

Since I had to talk to someone overseas on Skype at 3 p.m., so I had a tight self-set deadline. I left around 9:30 in the morning, heading west on the 401. I took the 427 south and backtracked a bit along Dundas Street to where it meets up Bloor Street and Kipling Avenue in a complicated intersection, called, not surprisingly, Six Points, which names the neighbourhood as well.

What little I know about Westwood Plaza (I’m not even sure if it actually is called “Westwood Plaza”; the theatre there is... was?... called Westwood Theatre) is that it opened in 1951 or so, when it was really on the edge of town... outside town, really; barely suburban at the time. It closed in 1998, I’m told. I can only remember being there once: in August of 1995, to see A Goofy Movie with friends. Not long afterwards, of course, it gave up the cinematic ghost. A karate dojo and a driving school remained in the plaza for a while, but even they eventually drifted away. I heard recently that the place is due to be razed this year, so I thought I’d better get going and take pictures of the place if it really was my intention to do so at all.

Six Points is an intersection where three major roads intersect, and in 1961, Metro undertook to rebuild it for serious traffic by means of ramps and bridges in a complicated jumble that, for all its ugliness and confusion, does allow traffic to get where it’s going (provided you pay attention to the signs) with a minimum of holdup. Supposedly the city now wants to untangle Six Points and recreate the at-grade intersections, with the idea of rerouting Dundas Street slightly to the south to avoid intersecting Kipling and Bloor where they intersect (in effect, ending the six “points”). If that happens... whether or not that happens... Westwood’s done for. Dundas would be routed through the land it now sits on. But even if Six Points isn’t changed, the city’s made other plans for the land.

Next stop was Sheridan Park Drive at Mississauga’s west border. It’s a strange street that’s really just two nubs of a street, connected by a big soup bowl of another street, Speakman Drive, in a relatively nice industrial park. Sheridan Park Drive is part of the road allowance of The Queensway, a street that was constructed west from Queen Street in Toronto near the Humber River in the 1950s and eventually made its way across most of Mississauga. Mississauga has a few valleys, though, and never connected all the chunks of The Queensway. Eventually one became Blythe Road, and another Sheridan Park Drive. I discovered it while getting seriously into maps in my early 20s, about half my life ago now. I used to wonder why they disconnected it. The truth, as I just discovered recently, is that they never actually built it. Sheridan Park Drive’s abandoned middle isn’t abandoned at all... it’s merely unopened. Well, again, change is in the air, and it looks like Mississauga’s intending to open that stretch at some point fairly soon. So I thought I’d record it.

I was down there years ago... decades ago... to look it over... one of my first little “lost road” expeditions, actually. I’d forgotten just how nothing it was. An impassible tract next to a cleared hydro corridor, which now features a bike path (I honestly can’t recall if it was there the first time I was there). It had been my intention to walk its length and record it for posterity, but it was so unimpressive that even I, uncharacteristically, decided “why bother”? I took some shots at either end, and I drove the parts that are currently open, as well as recording what Speakman Drive currently looks like, and left it at that.

Finally was the follow-up of the construction of a new two-lane bridge taking Lower Base Line across East Sixteen Mile Creek. Lower Base Line is known through most of Toronto and Mississauga as Eglinton Avenue (till around 1970, it was called Base Line Road in Mississauga), but Milton is still pretty rural and apparently don’t cotton to them thar new-fangled ideas and city mouse names, so... Lower Base Line it remains. Halton Region, of which Milton is a constituent municipality, also includes such retained bucolic, if perplexing, nomenclature as Upper Middle Road, so there’s every indication this is how it’s going to stay. But anyway...

I used to do a lot of riding around Halton in the early 90s with a buddy whose hobbies included just driving around, listening to music and shooting the breeze, so I saw quite a bit of backroads Halton. The two one-lane bridges on Lower Base Line, and the little parks adjacent to them, were reasonably familiar to me; even more so to him, as he reputed them to be make-out spots par excellence. About ten years ago, Halton decided these two one-lane, wood-decked bridges couldn’t cut the mustard and the time had come to replace them. The first is the more easterly of the two, which I discovered just this weekend is called Barnstable Bridge. Its successor was built at least two or three years ago... I have photos of it about that old... but it’s down in the valley and servicing it with a road that will bear, and safely conduct, the traffic was another matter, so it’s sat unused beside it for all that time. Till now. The road was closed at the heights last winter, and the new road is currently being constructed, mostly on the west side right now. I found out about that last week, and was excited by the prospect of getting some shots of this going on. This was really the jewel in the crown of the expedition this weekend.

I got to Sixth Line, didn’t read the sign, and decided Lower Base Line was closed at that point (it isn’t). So I drove up Sixth Line to Britannia Road, over to Fifth Line, and down, for the sensible reason that the bridge is much closer to Fifth Line than Sixth.

The route down on the west side is currently really torn up, because they’re putting in the drainage infrastructure. Fantastic photographic opportunity! But a daunting hike I almost balked at. Looking it over, it was just plausible enough that I decided to take it on. It meant a lot of climbing into ditches and back out again, balancing on scraps of the road about a foot wide, and dealing with mud and gravel, but I’m proud to say I took it all on and bested it. Coming through, I had a reasonably easy trek down into the valley.

The road’s being vastly widened, and they’re putting up an impressive curving retaining wall. The road now leads straight to the new bridge instead of snaking down to the little one-laner. When I got there, I was chagrined to find a family of four camped out on the old bridge. Just my luck. I worked like a sonovabitch to get down there, and the shots are ruined by the Joad family on a $2 Saturday outing. Uncharitable, I know, but I was thinking nerd daggers at them the whole time. I also noticed that the road on the east side was still intact. They’d come down a nice, even, paved stretch from the Sixth Line side. I could have been miffed but I wasn’t. If I’d come down that way, odds are I would not have bothered with the construction at the top of the Fifth Line side and I would have missed some valuable shots I got making a virtue of necessity, so it was just as well.

I shot what I could without being intrusive and headed up to the far side. There was construction equipment blocking the way at the top... apparently Lower Base Line was open that far. I noticed the family’s beat-up sedan at the top and recognized it as a car so badly maintained that I’d noticed it passing me going the other way at some point (you tend to notice things like a hood held shut by bungee cord). While I was up there, a middle aged couple came by in a pickup truck and we exchanged some brief polite chatter on the construction going on below. As they drove away, I heard the family on their way up the road. Thank goodness! The dad jokingly remarked to me “they” were ruining “his creek” down there. Having the place to myself, I was able to finally get some shots of the old bridge before facing the reverse trek up the west side and through the obstacle maze back to my own conveyance waiting for me at the top.

 

I guess I’ll have to follow this up in the late summer or early autumn... it’s due to re-open in October. We’ll see. I’m anxious to see if they preserve the old bridge for the park-goers. Its pier and decking date to the 1960s, but since no one’s even sure when its supports were first laid down, I think it warrants keeping it around, so long as it’s separated from vehicle traffic.

I made it back in time to talk to my buddy overseas, by the way. :)

Earth calling North America

Sometimes I wonder.

Someone left a whack of A4 paper in the printer the other day. At first I was annoyed, but then kind of intrigued. You hardly ever see this stuff (hold that thought). So I went looking to find out why the different standard exists. Well, it seems that, unlike letter and legal, which are pretty much arbitrary and seem to have been established mainly because they met someone’s aesthetic sensibilities once upon a time, rounded off to the nearest half inch, the A paper sizes are based on some scientific principles. A5, for instance, is exactly half the size of A4; A3 is twice the size of A4. But not only that: the proportions also scale up. The paper size is based on the golden ratio. One side is always a ratio of the square root of 2, and the other the same ratio to the number 1. A0, the paper size it’s all based on, is one square meter in area. I like systematic stuff like that. So, I thought, hey, why not mess around with working with A4 paper for my own purposes... be a little avant garde, at least on this side of the pond? Word and FrameMaker both have no problem with A4 dimensions. Printers are fine with it. The binding system I have accommodates it.

But can I actually find A4 paper anywhere? Can I, hell. Despite the fact that I live in a city of five million, and one stuffed to the rafters with immigrants from over 100 different countries to boot, and despite the fact that 90% of the planet uses A4 paper every day, here in Toronto I might as well be on Mars as far as getting my hands on any goes. You have special order it in. Can you believe this? I get that we don’t use a lot of the stuff, yet, but given how prevalent it is everywhere outside North America, this is embarrassingly parochial. I remember when a friend in Ireland sent me a set of Guinness drink coasters he’d gathered around Dublin, mounted in an A4 frame whose glass cracked in shipping to me. I went looking for a replacement frame. No luck. I finally had to get glass specially cut. That was six or seven years ago. Still nothing’s changed. I can’t believe this; I really can’t.

...Where's the "tah dah!"?

I haven’t blogged much about the process of buying a new place for a while because pretty much everything that had to be done was done a long time ago. But what was then months became weeks, and as of today, I’m a week away from the closing date. It’s funny; that still doesn’t seem as momentous as I always thought it would. What I’m finding daunting is the idea of moving. Not sure why; after all, that I’ve done before. I’ve never bought a home before, but that seems... I don’t know... just so automatic. Not that I wish it were troublesome, or a real hard slog, no... just that I always figured it would be thunderclaps and trumpets at every step, and it really wasn’t.

Yesterday was one of those moments. In getting all the ducks in a row, the real estate lawyer suggested we meet up, transfer the remaining funds, and sign the paperwork. Wednesday evening I took the bus up to a branch of my bank and squeezed out all the money I’d set aside. I got used to seeing over $20,000 in my chequing account for several months... I’m sure going to miss that impressive sight! It all got sprayed out on a single bank draft, which I handed over to the lawyer yesterday afternoon. He processed it and issued me a receipt while on the phone to some other real estate lawyer. Not much ceremony there. No fanfare, not even direct eye contact as I handed over the biggest chunk of my own money I’ve ever held in my hand in my life: $23,200. When I was a kid, that would have paid off 60% of the first home my parents bought in one fell swoop! Now it’s not even 20%, and the place I’m buying is a lot smaller. ...Anyway, I wanted it to be more than just perfunctory, but... hey, maybe when I get the keys.

So, pretty much everything is accomplished now; it’s just waiting for the bank to the pass the money through, and sometime around... now... next Friday, the lawyer puts the keys in my hand, and I enter the status of North American middle class homeowners/subclass mortgage holders. I try to make it seem like a big deal thinking this is the last weekend I’m strictly a renter; next weekend, I own a place, but it just doesn’t seem as impressive as it should. It’s just, “ah, crap, I gotta get my ass in gear and move in the next five weeks”...

* * * * *

On the current home front, after eight months, we finally have our balcony back. Larry noticed Wednesday that the railings were back up, and yesterday I happened to notice the board nailed across our door was gone at last. We moved the pent-up junk out of the way and stepped out into the spring evening sunshine for the first time in a year. It’s nice to have the option, but I noticed the railings are now glass at waist level, which means stepping out in puris naturalibus alfresco, however briefly, is no longer really an option. Oh, well. I’m moving anyway. At least we have a place to grill burgers for the next month or so... starting this evening. Waste not, want not. :)

Speaking terms

A few weeks ago now I wrote up an entry here about how I lost touch with Shelly, even though we live in the same building. I took a gamble and printed it up and put it in the mail slot of her apartment, then followed up with an email a few days later. To my immense relief, she replied pretty quickly and held no grudge at all. She was ready to pick things up where we left off.

Later that week we met for dinner at a local watering hole and got caught up. She’s living with her fiancée, a man somewhat younger than her but suited to her in outlook. During the interruption in our communication, she lost both her cherished cat and, even more terrible, her mother. I felt especially badly for being first too stubborn and then too scared to try to re-open the channels. But at least I finally did wade in and the water is fine.

I’ve seen her for lunch a couple of times since then and once on a walk with her new dog, a lab-poodle mix who looks a lot to me like a little spaniel; beautiful, lively little thing that makes me want a dog all over again. It’s great being back in touch, and even though the convenience of meeting in the lobby will go away again, I’m only going to be about a ten minute drive away, so it should amount to much the same thing. I’m bound to meet her fiancée sooner or later so I hope we hit it off well enough that my being around once in a while won’t be too awkward. I hadn’t quite forgotten how pleasing it is to be around her and talk with her, but actually getting back into doing that really puts a fresh coat of paint on it.

Unconditional

As often happens, I was in the men’s room when I heard the new song (well, new to me, anyway). It’s one of those places where it’s quiet and you tend to be alone for a few moments, so you pay attention. The song, as it turns out, is No One’s Gonna Love You by Band of Horses.

But no one... is ever gonna love you more than I do...

No one's gonna love you more than I do.

I suppose it’s meant to be reassuring to someone you’re spending your life with. But the song has a faint desperation and even a bit of a melancholy to it. It’s gorgeous and soaring in its way but I find it painfully depressing. As it’s rolled over in my head these last few days, it’s kept reminding me that my cat, Bonnie, is thirteen this summer. She’s in good shape, as far as I know, but I can’t help thinking that, you know, most cats are lucky if they get past about sixteen (though it’s not entirely rare for them to), and that mushy, iffy three years or so seems so, so short. It’s hard to explain, and I think a lot of people with spouses and children would be apt to wave it off, but... it’s almost less what I’d say to her if I could as what I’m tempted to believe is true about her with regard to me. Almost daily she’ll stare into my eyes, looking back and forth between them, reaching a paw out, and the knowledge that if I live long enough, I’m going to lose that, is almost more than I can stand. I honestly don’t think there’s any less conditional love in my life than hers. Humans always have conditions; we can’t help it. She wants to be with me wherever I am at home; she doesn’t want me to leave in the mornings. She’s scratched my arms trying to keep me from going. I find myself cutting short my excursions because I don’t want to leave her alone for too long, knowing in the back of my mind that my time with her company is, indeed, finite. So there’s all that in the chorus of this song.

I hate being the kind of person prone to mourn what I haven’t even lost yet... but on the other hand, when the time comes, I’ll be able to say I didn’t take it for granted. I do adore her, and the best part is, I’m convinced she knows that.